


Active Sleeper

by canadino



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7187090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bedfellows who toss and turn don't make for pleasant nights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Active Sleeper

Zoro woke up the exact moment before he hit the ground, tossed out of the hammock by the tangling of long legs around him. His body, though unconscious, reacted instinctively to the feeling of constriction and he had wormed his way out over the side. As he registered the moving environment around him, he thought vaguely of something he had heard a few years ago. Apparently, even children are born with apprehension to heights. If a panel of thick, sturdy glass was placed over a deep, dark hole and a child’s mother was coaxing them over it toward her, the child would hesitate, self preservation winning over parental trust. Humans weren’t meant to fly, after all. Then Zoro landed, face first, with a loud thud. 

Predictably, this woke the rest of the male crew. Usopp made a noise first, something between a shout and a gargle about being under attack, which made Chopper shriek in response. Luffy, in the bunk below, looked over at him. 

“Did you just fall out of bed?” he asked, surprisingly aware for having just been jolted out of sleep. 

“Guess so,” Zoro said, still lying on the ground. It was at moments like these that a man had to accept the reality of a situation. He was still trying to figure out what exactly had happened. Usopp groaned in his top bunk.

“Oh, why can’t you two ever just give it a rest?” When this was met with bewildered silence, he explained. “I bet Sanji just threw Zoro out of the bed because he was sleeping in his space.” Zoro looked up in the dark and saw Sanji’s head sticking out where he had just been sleeping moments before. Zoro reminded himself that the bunk above Luffy’s was his; as first mate, it was his privilege to be the closest to the captain. Sanji’s expression was unreadable in the dark, but Zoro knew he was being watched. “Would it have killed you to take Sanji’s bunk instead so that everyone could sleep the whole night through?”

“The principle of the matter,” Sanji muttered. His voice was thick and groggy, and anyone really listening would have known he had also just been abruptly awoken. That wasn’t the point; it wasn’t meant to be common knowledge that they shared the same hammock sometimes, the nights Sanji missed the Baratie the most or whenever Zoro couldn’t sleep after finishing a night watch just before dawn. When daylight broke, they were always found in separate bunks. Before too much time could sink in to reveal the absurdity of the matter, Franky made an entrance, loudly as usual.

“I heard a ruckus; what happened?”

“Zoro fell out of bed,” Luffy chirped. 

“But he sleeps like a rock and usually doesn’t move.”

“I was excited for night watch,” Zoro said, finally picking himself up off the floor and grabbing his jacket and swords. It was convenient this was the truth; Franky had just come down to fetch him. Crawling off to Sanji’s bunk in the aftermath while pretending he had made the mistake would just draw more attention to the situation. He rubbed his face; it smarted even with the carpeting Franky had set underneath the beds. Franky, not one to question small things like this, made his way over to his own bed without another word. 

The Thousand Sunny’s birds nest was much more comfortable than the minimalist, open air one that the Going Merry had, but Zoro was disciplined enough to stay awake for his shift. It wasn’t cold and the seats were comfortable, and they were truly lucky to have sailed through safe seas at the times that Luffy had dozed off in the middle of his watch. In any case, Zoro was a light sleeper when he was on his own; in daylight when the rest of the crew was up and alert, he allowed himself to sink to new depths below the realm of the living, but his training and the swordmaster’s life kept him on his feet at night, gazing out at the dark waters. 

So, of course, after his shift and after breakfast and after Chopper treated him for the faint bruise that showed up on his upper cheek bones, Zoro took a well-deserved, long nap on the lawn. He woke after lunch with a fork stuck in the dirt near his head, a calling card. He found Sanji in the kitchen and received one and a half portions of the stew from lunch, the half as an apology for the incident the night before. He waited the required one hour after eating - enforced by Chopper, who refused to have any gastro-related injuries on his watch - before heading up to the crow’s nest again to lift. 

Brooke was already in the nest, gazing out southward in the direction they were sailing toward. This took Zoro off guard for a moment; he hadn’t been expecting anyone on guard duty as this was his usual time with his weights which he used also to scope their surroundings. Brooke, though by no means a new member anymore, was still someone he felt a polite distance with. He had no musical abilities and he couldn’t read sheet music and had no interest in peeping at women’s underwear, so he was unsure of how to engage an animated skeleton. Brooke turned at his arrival and registered him even without eyeballs. 

“So it is that time!” he said.

“Yes,” Zoro said, not knowing what else to say. “You don’t mind?”

“It has been so long since I have been able to work with real, physical muscles of my own, so it is no problem to me at all. You are truly the best specimen on this ship to observe and live vicariously through. Though I’m not really living!” Brooke clattered as he laughed, something about him that Zoro still found slightly disconcerting although he set up his weights without missing a beat. He was used to training with an audience, the Merry not having a defined space for him to do so and Chopper was always fascinated with how much he could lift and for how long. For a while, Luffy had been a training partner until he realized that with his rubber abilities, he could also manipulate his muscles to stretch and congregate in the areas he wanted and sitting on the helm and sneaking food was much more interesting to him. Brooke sat quietly as he began his sets and Zoro was about to forget he was even around when the skeleton spoke again. 

(Training always brought on stray thoughts, and today, Zoro marveled at how a Devil Fruit could construct vocal cords where there had not been any. Anything was possible, even defeating Mihawk.)

“So how are you going to solve the problem of Sanji being an active sleeper? I suppose you don’t want to fall out of bed again?”

A less disciplined man might have dropped the weights, but Zoro had years of practice and he’d already fallen once today. “Excuse me?” he said. 

Brooke rattled as he shook himself. “Ah, my mistake. Not everyone knows about it, after all.” Zoro continued his sets, frowning at Brooke’s singular expression. “I should probably tell you that I do not really sleep, for all intents and purposes. My Devil Fruit brought back my soul, not my body, and my bones don’t need to sleep to rest and recover. I do fall into a state of dormancy at night to join the rest of you, but I’m still aware of everything around me.” If Brooke had eyes, Zoro thought his gaze would become knowing. “So I have seen that you and Sanji sometimes sleep together. I have no reason to share this, so I haven’t.”

So that was it. “No, you have no reason to do that at all,” Zoro agreed. He switched exercises. 

“So you don’t deny it! How wonderful! We can have a proper discussion about this after all.” Zoro did not want this either, but he was trapped while training; stopping in the middle always threw him off for the rest of the day and anyway, a swordmaster did not shy away from challenging trials. “I am much older than all of you, and I have seen many people. Our cook definitely takes the cake for one of the more restless sleepers I have known in all my life. It’s those legs, I am sure. He wields them so freely in battle they must not be as stiff in their joints as a normal person’s.”

It wasn’t that Zoro disliked Sanji’s legs. They were immensely valuable in battle and even on the ship, they carried him with no trouble at all to tend to his friends and make sure they were well-fed and satisfied for the trouble ahead. They were also very pleasant thrown over Zoro’s during some of Luffy’s mandated group naps on the lawn and whenever Sanji spent time with him while dialing back his acid tongue to tame insults on the quality of Zoro’s fashion sense or bad choices in haircuts. Seeing them tense, darting through the air and colliding with an enemy’s face, it was comforting to Zoro to feel Sanji’s legs when he was at ease. Then of course, the natural flexibility and control of those legs helped in other things, like the instances they snuck off to one of the Sunny’s more obscure nooks and crannies together. Zoro finished using his hand weights and moved on to barbells. “So he tosses and turns when he sleeps. Nothing I can really do about that.” 

Brooke’s jaw was fixed in place, no skin or muscle to form any real indicator of his emotions, so he knocked his teeth together to show amusement. “Oh ho ho ho! Forgive me for saying so, but I find it endearing that a former pirate hunter is willing to accept small discomforts for the sake of his sweetheart. Argh!” He yelled when Zoro hitched an ankle weight over his foot and kicked it with sharp accuracy toward Brooke’s face. “Please! I have no way of taking in more calcium, these old bones cannot take such rough treatment!”

“I don’t appreciate being made the source of your yucks. If you’re done saying nonsense, please leave. Your chatter is making it hard for me to concentrate.”

“I only wish to be helpful,” Brooke said, demurely sitting without knocking his bones together. “You know, unrestrained movement can be dangerous. Suppose it wasn’t you who fell out of the bed last night? What if the cook fell instead and landed on his arm? Wouldn’t that be bad?”

The beds were not made for two people. Franky would probably be more than happy to craft new sleeping quarters if asked, but Zoro would rather bite his tongue off than admit he’d like something like that. On the same level of things that Zoro would rather die that say out loud was that he liked the nights he spent next to Sanji (no wandering hands, because that was too risky in common quarters); gaining a good group of nakama was good for his soul, after spending his years wandering alone or hunting criminals. The relationships he formed proved that man was not meant to exist alone, and the intimacy of having someone’s back to his own was an unexpected indulgence. “What do you suggest then?” he asked, irritated that Brooke was not getting to the point that he clearly had but was taking his sweet time sharing. 

“Simple,” Brooke said, holding up one bony digit. “Restraint can work wonders. Why else do babies have cribs with high walls? Why do dogs have leashes? If the distance that can be crossed is limited, then things naturally fall into place.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Zoro said. There was something wrong with his logic, but without Nami or Robin type analysis, whatever it was escaped him. 

“Maybe just wrapping him up in the sheets loosely could help. He wouldn’t be splaying his limbs all over the place that way.”

Zoro considered this as he shifted the heavy medicine ball left to right as he toned his abdomen. “I don’t really trust your advice,” he said bluntly. 

Brooke shrugged, his mouth falling open with a mirthful laugh. “Well, you’re free to do as you please, mister swordsman. I just offered my completely unsolicited opinion!” He weaved his way toward the ladder. “That’s all I wanted to say. I’ll see myself out. But do let me know if this was helpful!”

Zoro thought about the issue after his workout, all through dinner, and during his early night watch. He thought about getting a second opinion from Robin as she came, covering a yawn with one of her many hands, to relieve him of guard duty, but the idea of her wise grin in response was mortifying. This was supposed to be a secret, again. Shaking his head, Zoro decided, like all troublesome riddles, it was an issue to be settled after a good long night’s rest. 

He found Sanji sleeping in his bunk, leaving him parts of the left side. 

Flashbacks of falling through the air gripped Zoro with a sense of basic terror. He’d gone nights on nights of sharing the same space with Sanji without incident, but just once had been enough to train his brain to be skeptical. Maybe Brooke was yanking his chain, but it was the only thing he was working off on. But when Zoro tried to casually cocoon Sanji in his bedsheets, the man had weakly shoved him away, grumbling under his breath. His instincts were almost as refined as Zoro’s. Letting out a breath through his nose, Zoro surveyed his options. He wouldn’t be able to sleep properly otherwise. 

In the end, it seemed a full body coverage was impossible. Sanji’s arms could only really reach so far, so it was his legs that were a problem. Stupid leggy cook. Zoro ran Sanji’s silk tie, thrown haphazardly over the side of the bunk, in his hands and thought some more. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a working solution. A loose loop would let Sanji kick a bit if he wanted but not enough to really infringe on Zoro’s space.

When Zoro finished and admired his handiwork, he remembered that Kuina had smacked all the loose knots out of him. Swordsman worth a lick would not lose their packs or have bad guys slip through their fingers just because they couldn’t secure them. He had tied a tight, sturdy loop. This was not what he was expecting. Sanji did not wake, though. 

It was good enough, Zoro decided. He lay his head down and closed his eyes. 

It started with irregular movement next to him, jerky enough to feel unnatural, and after a while of feeling it rock the bunk - Luffy was also a heavy sleeper and used to the rocking of the sea - he opened his eyes. Zoro stared at the ceiling for a long time, willing Sanji to settle and drift away from whatever nightmare he was having. But he was a godless man, so his prayers were answered by Sanji twisting around a little harder until the man was practically thrashing right next to him. What a nightmare! But perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his ankles were tied and he was moving his legs like a fish tail out of water. Zoro watched Sanji work himself slowly into consciousness, realizing as Sanji opened his mouth to yell in alarm that the whole room was going to be woken up again for the second night in a row and he quickly clamped his hand over Sanji’s mouth. 

The flailing got a little more frantic until Sanji realized he was not under duress and Zoro was muttered in his ear to get it together. He raised his ankles to examine the restraint and when Zoro was confident Sanji was not going to make a sound and took his hand off his mouth, Sanji whispered, “What the hell are you playing at? I’m not into this kind of thing.”

“This kind of thing?” A candle lit in Zoro’s brain. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not about to do something like that with everyone around.”

“Okay, then explain why you’ve got me tied up. You have three seconds or I really am going to push you out of bed this time.”

Making a mental promise to dismember every joint of Brooke’s if he ended up getting pushed, Zoro said, “You move around in your sleep a lot. You pretty much kicked me out of bed last night. I thought this would help but I guess you naturally need to move or you’ll die.”

Sanji’s face was close enough to his that Zoro watched the angry frown turn into a disbelieving leer. “Okay, then just tell me. You didn’t have to tie me up to make that point.”

“Tell you? What are you going to do, make yourself stop moving when you sleep?”

“Yeah.” Sanji reached down and loosened the knot around his ankles, shaking out his tie and tossing it somewhere on the ground. “You think you’re the only one who has trained their body? I move a lot when I sleep naturally, but if it bothers you, I can make myself still when you’re with me. Just say so; I didn’t think you were capable of not speaking up.” Sanji settled back down in a comfortable position as Zoro gaped at him.

“I didn’t think you could do that.”

“You can admire me later. You’ll wake everyone up if you keep whispering.” Sanji threw an arm over Zoro’s waist and Zoro could feel the grin Sanji was pressing into his neck. This was very soothing. He had spent a lot of time worrying about nothing and it had tired him out. Still, there was one thing he ought to mention as well.

“Brooke knows about us, by the way.”

“Franky,” Luffy mumbled sleepily as Zoro propped himself up off the floor, cursing under his breath, “the first thing when you wake up after breakfast - put a lid on Zoro’s bed, will you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
